In-situ Construction of Superhydrophilic g-C3N4 Film by Vapor-Assisted Confined Deposition for Photocatalysis

Abstract

Herein, we report an improved strategy for the synthesis of superhydrophilic g-C 3 N 4 film by vapor-assisted confined deposition method. With minimum amount of precursor, the vapor could be confined in the microenvironment for facilitating the film growth on both sides of the substrates. The obtained films showed similar physiochemical properties with the bulk counterpart and could be peeled off from the substrates by soaking in hot water. The free-standing film is flexible and superhydrophilic, featuring many microfibers atop. The g-C 3 N 4 film from both sides of the substrates could be used in the photocatalytic dye degradation in a repeated manner and showed excellent performance and stability. The current work should shed light on the optimized growth of the g-C 3 N 4 film and could find more application in future device field.

Visible-Light-Driven Photocatalytic Water Disinfection Toward Escherichia coli by Nanowired g-C3N4 Film

“…Due to the metal-free composition, low-cost, suitable bandgap and beneficial energy levels, graphitic carbon nitride (g-C 3 N 4 ) has recently attracted much attention as photocatalyst for water splitting, CO 2 reduction, pollutant degradation, organic syntheses, and bacterial disinfection under visible light irradiation in the past decade Cao et al, 2015;Liu et al, 2015;Liu et al, 2016b;Zhang et al, 2017;Jia et al, 2019;Zhang et al, 2019;Giusto et al, 2020b;Lim et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2020a;Zhang et al, 2020b). Especially, for bacterial disinfection, most of the previously reported studies focused mainly on the bulk particulate material (Shen et al, 2017;Ran et al, 2019;Gan et al, 2020;Ni et al, 2020;Zhao et al, 2021), which makes recycling difficult and would inevitably lead to secondary pollution of fine nanoparticles (Wang et al, 2019a).…”

“…It is promising to further improve the performance and stability of g-C 3 N 4 materials for water disinfection by employing thin films instead of the common bulk materials (Thomas et al, 2008;Wang et al, 2019c;Chen et al, 2020;Jia et al, 2020;Villalobos et al, 2020). However, the nanoscale topography on such film is usually absent, which would enhance the capture of bacteria from the solution and thereby the disinfection efficiency (Arazoe et al, 2016;Peng et al, 2018b;Jia et al, 2019).…”

“…Herein, we report a simple route to synthesize the g-C 3 N 4 film featuring numerous nanowires on the top through a vaporassisted confined deposition onto the ground glass (Bian et al, 2015b;Jia et al, 2019). The adoption of high-roughness ground glass could prevent the easily peeling off of the g-C 3 N 4 film, which was usually the case in the smooth counterpart.…”

Facile assembly of a graphitic carbon nitride film at an air/water interface for photoelectrochemical NADH regeneration

“…18 Since 2015, more and more researchers have attempted to synthesize g-C 3 N 4 film directly from the in situ thermal condensation of N-rich precursors onto various substrates, which avoids the poor interfacial engineering problem that usually occurs in conventional twostep deposition methods. 19,20 The thickness of the g-C 3 N 4 film can be controlled using different amounts of precursors and thermal treatment times. However, this method usually requires the use of high-temperature-resistant substrates, excluding the possibility of direct deposition onto a flexible substrate.…”

Characterization and Electronic Properties of Heptazine Layers: Towards Promising Interfacial Materials for Organic Optoelectronics

“…It should be noted that all heptazines substituted with electron-deficient groups are suitable candidates for this general purpose, and this preliminary study is currently extended to other derivatives of this highly promising family. Heptazine-derived materials have already been proposed in OPV devices, but there are in situ formed polymers, with ill-defined structures, while however showing interesting performance [ 33 , 34 ].…”